WELCOME TO THE FUTURE STATE

FAMOUS FOR ITS RICH HISTORY AND ROLLING COUNTRYSIDE, VIRGINIA IS EMERGING AS AMERICA'S HOTTEST HIGH-TECH AND INNOVATION ZONE-A SILICON VALLEY EAST, QUIETLY SKETCHING OUT A NEW FUTURE FOR US ALL

- MATT POTTER

The bright morning wind skips off Chesapeake Bay and whistles through the historic ironwork and brick frontages of Norfolk's seafront. Hunter Walsh bowls into his office in Hampton Roads' cluster of converted warehouses for our meeting. He wraps his tweed jacket tight around him. Even at this pre-breakfast hour, he's a ball of energy.

The farmer-turned-start-up-incubator is an infectious talker. “I'm the son of sixth-generation farm owners,” he says. “My family have farmed here since the 1840s. The thing is, they were great at growing stuff, terrible at turning it into business. I had a dream of turning it into a multimillion-dollar business, but it wasn't easy to change things, with three generations in charge.”

Walsh left the farm at 23 and headed for the growing tech-first cities of the Virginia coast. Today, his cash crop is start-ups. He is one of the directors at 757 Collab, an acclaimed incubator and hothouse that's at the heart of Virginia's thriving innovation scene. His journey from family farm to the heart of America's most exciting new innovation hotspot mirrors Virginia's own trajectory.

The state's transformation over the past five years is striking. It currently holds the award as the most attractive state in America to set up business operations, according to CNBC. In recent years Amazon, Microsoft, Apple and Boeing have all opened major offices here—in Amazon's case, its stunning second head office, HQ2, after considering 238 locations across the U.S. It is, says one tech investor, “a scramble to get set up there.”

Today, Virginia is the world's data center capital, with more data processing than anywhere on Earth—a staggering 10 percent of our planet's total capacity, fueled in part by a local AI boom.

These developments are also driving the need for an innovation ecosystem—for smaller, agile businesses to sniff out opportunities or problems, and solve them, creating a fertile environment for start-ups.